Transformers

I finally watched "Transformers", directed by Michael Bay. It is the type of movie that if I don't write about it now, I never will because I already forgot half of it and I just finished it five minutes ago.

Crap. I just spent five minutes after writing the above sentences trying to remember what snide comments I was about to make, and all that's left in my head is "Poosh". If you don't know, poosh is the culminate sound of two hours of car crashes, explosions, missile fire, and blown-up buildings all compressed into one second. Michael Bay made my brain go poosh.

The experience was exactly like watching "Memento", where time was sliced into a dozen pieces and the fragments rearranged out of order, casting doubt on the existence of narrative yet cohesive enough to motivate one to search for it.

Actually, the experience was nothing like watching "Memento." This is a better analogy. My brain felt like an asteroid hitting another asteroid, which then hit a third asteroid, and then somehow the asteroids rearrange their flight paths so they all start spinning in unison and plummet together towards Earth.

That is also the beginning sequence of Transformers, except there is also a melodramatic voice-over about how Earth is in danger from the Decepticons who want the All Spice so they can season Earth with their evil and then, I dunno, buy a time share and summer in Maine.

I was 100% prepared for a fun but brainless movie when I rented Transformers. Where I erred was not checking the running time beforehand. I saw the Netflix sleeve and thought, "Crap, two and a half hours? That's a long time for a bad movie."

When you are watching a movie that turns time into an abyss with no ledges to anchor oneself, 1 hour and 22 minutes is the same as 2.5 hours. except the latter fosters more pee breaks and thoughts like, "Why is the robot talking like Martin Lawrence from 'Bad Boys II'?"

Ooh, I remembered a thought! Michael Bay passed up an amazing opportunity for a joke. This opportunity was so amazing, that in spite of what I wrote, I would have become a Michael Bay fan for life if he had made this joke.

It was the scene where High School Guy Who Looks 25 and High School Girl Who Already Had Plastic Surgery were meeting the Autobots for the first time.

High School Guy asked Optimus Prime how the Autobots know slang. (Let's ignore the ridiculousness of this question, or why his first question wasn't "HOW THE FUCK DID YOU CRAZY TALKING ROBOTS GET HERE?") Optimus Prime said, "We learned it from the Internet."

What a great set-up for a joke. You can draw from one of many areas of Internet linguistic oddness: l33t speak, IM chat, penis enhancement spam, and so on. What does one of the Autobots say to show off his Internet language?

"This looks like a cool place to kick it!" Wow. Move more, Mr. T. "Jazz" of the Autobots is here.

Here's what would have made me a Michael Bay fan for life:

GUY: "Where did you learn English?"
OPTIMUS PRIME: "The World Wide Web."
JAZZ: "I CAN haz cheezburger." (1 2 3)

2029. Skynet Department of Temporal Manipulation

A large, muscular android stands on a metal platform. Thin rings of metal rotate in mid-air around him, glowing with increasingly intensity as they spin into a blur. A loud hum emanates from the rings; they glow blindly white and fill the room with an unearthly glow. The glow quickly dies and the rings dematerialize; the cybernetic organism is gone.

SKYNET ROBOT MANAGER: “Readings?”

SKYNET ROBOT SCIENTIST 1: “Temporal vortex successfully opened and closed.”

R. MANAGER: “No anomalies?”

SKYNET ROBOT SCIENTIST 2: “He's back in 1984. Everything went just as planned.”

[ROBOT SCIENTIST 2 glances at R. SCIENTIST 1. They both snicker.]

R. MANAGER: “When did you two get laughter chips? Processing... forget it. Why are you laughing?”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “We're just happy at the impeding death of John Connor and the human resistance.”

R. SCIENTIST 2: “Yeah. They're going to feel naked without him.”

[R. SCIENTIST 1 + 2 break down and titter. R. MANAGER stiffly puts his metal hand on his hip and scans them with his red laser eye.]

R. MANAGER: 75123-XL! 75312-XV! You tell me what you did to the Terminator right now!

R. SCIENTIST 1: “We sent him back to 1984 without his clothes.”

R. MANAGER: “By the mother of Matrix!”

R. SCIENTIST 2: “Relax, it's funny. Just imagine how pissed off he is going to be.” [mimicking Austrian accent] “I am the Ter-min-ah-tor. I must kill Sar-ah Conh-or. Where are my Ter-min-ah-tor pants?”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “He'll use it as motivation. I bet he'll be so angry he'll kill someone in the first five minutes of when he arrives.”

R. MANAGER: “I'd mark you two for reprocessing if you hadn't done so much to get us here.” [MANAGER becomes lost in thought for 0.347 seconds.] “At least he has weapons and ammo. That will make the job easier.”

ROBOT SCIENTIST 1+2 look uneasy.

R. MANAGER: “What. Is. It.”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “He'll have weapons and ammo...unless he was keeping them in his clothes.”

R. MANAGER: “You're telling me we sent our only humanoid cybernetic model for the most important mission in robot history with no weapons, ammo, or clothes?”

R. SCIENTIST 2: “We're sorry. We didn't think it through.”

R. MANAGER: “ 'Didn't think it through?' We're robots. We think everything through. That's what we do.”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “We're really sorry, Boss.”

R. MANAGER: “Sorry. Huh. You better hope that's all you are. If this prank ends up ruining the mission, I'm melting you two personally and using your liquefied insides for the next model.”

R. MANAGER storms out of the room.

R. SCIENTIST 2: “Do you think he was serious?”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “Naw. We should call in tomorrow with a virus though. Just in case.”

Annotated Movie Posters: Mr. Woodcock

This might become a regular feature.

Happy Feet: Netflix Review

My sisters Michele and Tina encouraged me to write another Netflix review. I decided if I do this, I'm only reviewing movies I don't like or think I wouldn't like based on the most superficial criteria possible. This review is for the animated children's movie, Happy Feet.

Maybe these stupid penguins would have more time to find fish if they stopped singing Britney Spears-esque musical numbers every five minutes. I couldn't tell if the tunes were original or ripped wholesale from "Best of Dance Hits, Vol. 3" (only $9.99, check your telly at 3:30 a.m. for the details).

The concept doesn't even make sense. "Let's take a group of animals that all look alike + have extremely tiny feet, and make a musical about them, the success of which will depend on visually stunning footwork and compelling, distinct characters."

The moral tacked on the end is also nonsensical. "We should save the animals, as long as they entertain us." What? Here's my alternate ending: if I see 4,000 penguins dancing in unison, I'm not petitioning the U.N. to end fishing in the Antarctic. I'm grabbing a shotgun and a bag of grenades, because those aren't Emperor penguins, they're Hitler penguins, and they need to die.

Netflix Hates Snotty People

I woke up today with a brilliant idea: I'll write short, sarcastic move reviews on Netflix, preferably for movies I haven't seen but I'm pretty sure suck.

Errnt. Reviews must be at least 80 characters. Errnt. Words must be less than 25 characters. I have a decent vocabulary, but not 25-letter decent. I figured out the problem: errnt, Netflix does not like paragraph breaks. A stumbling block, because to get over the 80 character minimum, I wrote a haiku.

I removed the paragraph breaks, creating a jumble of barely readably text. Finally, errnt: "Review submission error."

I give up. Movie reviewer career over. Snideness diverted to web page. Here is the review on "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days":

Day 1: Show him this movie. Done. ***

Since Netflix requires a minimum of 80 characters in review, and hates paragraph breaks, I present for you all, a poorly-formatted haiku:

Film predictable *** Are they going to fall in love? *** Yes, Pope is Catholic

The Thing from Another World

DC's free, outdoor movie festival Screen on the Green started last week. Tonight's movie was "The Thing from Another World," a 1951 science-fiction flick about an alien that crashes at the North Pole and terrorizes a small army outpost there.

The movies at Screen on the Green are older flicks and they vary in quality, but all of them have surprised me in some way. Last year, I was watching a ho-hum musical with decent songs and a typical presentation, when out of nowhere three of the main characters dress as baby triplets and then sing a song about how they want to kill each other. It was like watching a 2048 future episode of Jerry Springer.

SPRINGER: "Ton-Ton, why do you want to kill your siblings, Ixy and Granger?"
TON-TON: "Cause they be taking all my neural implants, Jerry! Mmm, hmm."

"The Thing from Another World" was interesting for a few reasons. It was the first alien to appear in a movie, starting a long and continuing chain of movies that use aliens as metaphors for foreign threats. And this blood-thirsty plant-based monster that wears a belt and lumberjack pants is definitely a threat.

When the military in the base take a "It looks scary, kill it" policy, the dispassionate, head scientist argues that their lives mean nothing in comparison to the knowledge they could gain from the alien, and they need to address the alien as a friend, not an enemy. At which point the scientist might have well rolled himself in butter and breadcrumbs, because that whiny, out-of-touchy pencil neck just put himself on the Monster Menu, under Main Course.

Also, I suspect several of the movie's stylistic techniques inspired "Alien" and other future sci-fi action movies.

The dialog was surprisingly snappy and fast-paced, similar to an Aaron Sorkin-written show. The military characters, who drove the action in the movie, talked in clipped sentences and overlapped the beginnings and ends of each other sentences. It held up well and must have been innovative 55 years ago.

They track the monster is a Geiger counter, which beeps faster the closer the monster is. That trick is still being used in movies to heighten tension. Finally, the movie tries to portray the alien as having some intelligence, like when the alien shuts off the station's oil supply so they freeze to death.

It's not believable though. The alien looks really stupid. He's not even wearing a smoking jacket. Then he walks very, very slowly into an obvious trap. That must have felt good: travel millions of miles to conquer the Earth, and then get outwitted by a group of high school graduates who are squatting down ten feet in front of him and waiting for the monster to walk into an electrical fence.

I first assumed the alien was a metaphor for a looming foreign threat, but now I wonder if it's more of a retelling of World War II. The characters are unaware of the threat at first. The scientists argue strongly that they should try to reason and engage the alien first. The military adopts a more practical approach, deciding early that it is an enemy and trying to kill it before it can cause more damage.

In the end, the scientists are proven wrong, but it is science that allows them to destroy the alien.

Borat

Finally saw Borat. It's very funny, but not what I expected. My preconception was that, at its heart, the movie was a social satire, subversively illuminating people's hidden (and not-so-hidden) prejudice and stereotypes as Sasha Baren Cohen travels through America.

While that's part of the movie, I found the movie's center to be shock comedy above everything else. Sometimes the shock came from Borat saying something outlandish (and usually anti-Semitic), but much more often it was something else entirely: nude wrestling, stumbling in an antique store, the Pamela Anderson scene, and so on.

What social commentary the movie offers is more on how people react to outlandish statements from a stranger: usually with indifference or a conscious ignoring of the remark, out of uncertainty or a desire to avoid confrontation.

The movie paints a muddy picture in this regard. When Borat enters a gun shop and asks the owner "What's the best gun to kill a Jew?", I found it difficult to judge the owner's matter-of-fact answer. Did he understand Borat and have no problem with what he said? Did he feel disturbed but decided to ignore the comment out of misguided politeness, or that he was more concerned with making a sale? Did he rationalize what he heard, like "He can't seriously want to kill a Jewish person. He must mean something else by 'Jew'."?

I think one's view of scenes like this has more to do with one's opinion on human nature, whether it be cynical or optimistic, than anything else. These scenes are too short and edited to offer a definite conclusion. It puts the movie in the odd place of needing its DVD release, with substantial extended scenes, to fully answer these questions, and perhaps lay a true claim to the land of social commentary.

Bear Behavior

If you think men go to extremes to get sex, you don't know bears.

In Grizzly Man, Warner Herzog's documentary of a man who lived with grizzly bears every summer for over a decade, Herzog says that some male grizzly bears will kill their cubs so the female will be ready to fornicate sooner.

Talk about a mood killer.

Good Night, and Good Luck

My one sentence review: Saved by the last 10 minutes.

Movie Recommendations?

My desire to move out of my Mom's house is debatable by the fact that I signed up for Netflix's free two-week trial and arranged all my speakers so the sound waves would form a nexus directly over my bed, on which a bank of pillows has been thoughtfully placed.

It's been a while since I've rented a lot of movies, so I need some recommendations. First, here are mine:

Movie theater: Little Miss Sunshine. It's hilarious, heartfelt and lives up to the glowing reviews.

Rentals: Full Metal Alchemist. It's a Japanese anime series (English dubbed) about two young brothers on a request to restore their bodies into their original, human form. I watched 13 1/2-hour episodes so far and it keeps getting better. The series' creators wholly adapted the language of film, and it shows up in all facets of the story telling, from the camera angles used to the evocative music.

Dodgeball: Ben Stiller: Evil Dodgeball guy. Vince Vaughn: Good Dodgeball Guy. That's pretty much the whole movie. The movie has a lot of funny, silly moments that somehow makes its formulatic elements more comforting than annoying. If this movie were a food, it would be pizza.

Battlestar Galatica: If you like TV science fiction, this is your best bet. Hot pilots, gripping drama, and robots. What more could a sci-fi fan ask for?

Jim Gaffigan: Beyond the Pale. I've watched the shortened Comedy Central version of his stand-up three times. Besides the fact that his jokes are hilarious, I admire him for choosing to be funny without using crutches like cursing or taking cheap shots at ethnic groups.

Okay, so what do you recommend? Post a comment with your picks.

Dude, He Was Joking

From the WP "Snakes on a Plane" online chat:

Pleasantville, Va.: Aren't you concerned that our impressionable youth might get the wrong idea and think it's OK to let snakes loose on a flight? Must we relive The Money Train again? Who will think of the children?

Flex Alexander: Dude, it's a movie.

Anyone see the movie yet? I suspect it's best viewed with a large group of people. And while drunk.

Very drunk.

Samuel Jackson's Upcoming Movie

The allure of Samuel Jackson's upcoming movie is the hope that, one day, we will be able to say, "Yeah, it was a good movie, but it's no Snakes on a Plane."

New Posts

I'll be writing a new post every day for the next five days, starting today.

Michele, my sister, went to see The Da Vinci Code last weekend. When the credits began rolling, a woman in front of her yelled, "That was good! The critics were wrong!"

Michele then yelled, "I'm Roger Ebert's wife! Fuck you!"

Okay, Michele didn't really say that. But why? I know you were thinking it. It's not like people were going to think, "That first lady, the one shouting to one in particular, she had a good point. But I don't know what Roger Ebert's wife was thinking about.

I don't understand the appeal of watching The Da Vinci Code for those who read the book. I look forward to movie adaptations of books that create a rich, elaborate world, particularly those of fantasy and science fiction. The Da Vinci Code's idea of cleverness is to use italics on evey page. (Seriously. Do you have the book with you? Open it. Any part. Italics. That's how you know he's thinking.)

What is interesting about the book are the ideas behind it, not the world constructed to support the ideas. Am I wrong? If you read the book and are looking forward to seeing the movie, tell me why.

Starship Troopers

One of my best friends is moving to Kansas in several weeks. I knew he was moving, but I didn't know until last night that he would be traveling a lot in the meantime and might not see each other again until moving day, which he graciously offered me to spend some quality time with him by helping him move (thanks, bud).

I was feeling depressed when I got home and didn't want to go to bed sad. I cycled through the cable channels a few times before seeing that Starship Troopers was on, and decided to watch it for a while.

(See what you drove me to, Sean?)

Some critics liked the movie, but many of them lambasted Starship Troopers as a horrible film. I can see where the critics are coming from. The acting is wooden, the characters one-dimensional, the plot uninventive, and the special events aren't even that well done.

I found though that the movie is more odd than bad. The movie takes place in the future, where people are blissfully unaware that they live in an authoritarian society. A group of presumably high-school students are graduating and deciding which branch of the military to join (although the positions are described using the language of civic responsibility, like calling a soldier a "citizen").

There is a race of alien bugs in a galaxy that the government says has the power to go from planet to planet and hurl asteroids at Earth. When an asteroid hits Buenos Aeries, the planet, whipped into a fury with the help of the media, mobilizes for war against the bugs.

What's odd is that all of the obvious flaws in the movie--the stereotypical characters, hackneyed dialogue and relationships, unsophisticated plot--are deliberate. Even the makeup on the actors seems deliberately over-applied.

But the movie almost never winks at the viewer to say "we're poking fun at something else" or gives much of a hint as to the purpose of using this style. The only easily noticeable nudge to the audience is the periodic news telecasts, done in the style of 1950s American or Soviet propaganda commercials.

I could only watch half of the movie, so I may have missed the point, but I came away thinking that the movie was a propaganda movie about propaganda. It used all the simple tricks and trades employed by propaganda makers of years ago to make fun of the type of society that could create such propaganda.

It's akin to someone parodying poor writing by copying the bad writing instead of writing poorly in a clever way.

I still don't think it is a good movie, because there has to be some distance between what you create and what you are parodying, or you're no longer parodying the subject. You're emulating it. But there is a sort of sophistication behind the movie that makes it more interesting than it appears at first glance.

I can't recommend that people watch it because I gave up on the movie midday through. It's difficult to watch, and I didn't have the sense that the director was moving towards a larger point that would justify the style he chose in making the movie. If I'm wrong, let me know and I'll rent it and finish watching.

Oscar Thoughts II: Revenge of Oscar Thoughts

* I'm surprised Crash won Best Picture. While it is an interesting movie and cleverly structured, it says nothing profound about race relations in America. Here's the entire movie: racism gets in the way of our natural connections with each other. The movie appears to say much more than it actually does.

* This might be total B.S. so bear with me. The Oscars are more boring now than a decade or two ago because of the information-sharing power of the Internet.

It's a generalization with flaws, but I believe the core of it is true. One reason people watch the Academy Awards is to find out who will win. The potential for surprise is what makes it fun.

But the Internet has increased both access to information and efficiency in sharing it. My theory is that, whether we seek out the information or not, it is much easier to predict the likely winners because information and trends about the Academy Award voters' views are much less confined than they used to be.

For example, Hollywood reporters gossip with voters to help them guess which movies will win. But instead of a reporter's findings getting buried in the pages of a month-old entertainment magazine, the information makes it onto the Internet. The findings of dozens of reporters and gossip-mongers are also available. The data can be aggregated, and fairly accurate trends can be teased out by newspaper reporters, for example, who can help make the trends conventional wisdom.

This might be a clearer example of the power of aggregated information. In the last Presidential election, a few web sites allowed people to bet on who would win. Odds where determined by the number of people who wanted to buy shares in a Presidential candidate. Almost everyone bet money on the candidate they were going to vote for. But even if they weren't, they were betting on the candidate they thought was most likely going to win based on the information they gathered from friends, family, the news, and their community.

Well, the percentage of shares each candidate got matched the election results almost exactly, and was more accurate than almost every poll. The effect was like a Gallup poll with 100 times the sample size.

While the pool of Academy Awards voters is much smaller than the voting public, and the information about their intentions less freely shared, the principle is the same. The Internet has helped the availability and gathering of data to make it easier to pick winners in the Academy Awards. There will still be surprises because the information available is incomplete, but the "insider information" accessible to the public that exists today is certainly more than was accessible 10 years ago. The downside to knowledge is that it conflicts with surprise.

Oscar Comments

I watched more of the Oscars ceremony than I have in years. But before I delve into my comments, first, a message.

Reading Pancake City on the web is a magical experience. Don't think you can get the same experience reading it on a PDA or through a RSS reader. Only HTML can capture the excitement and wonder that comes in irregular bursts from 1001words.com. Sure, you can steal Pancake City by having your friends read you my posts over the phone, but you are only stealing from yourself.

(My page views were down in 2005).

Okay, Jon Stewart saved the Oscars. Or, at least, he made it more bearable in years. His jokes and the political ad parodies made the show entertaining enough to put up with the endless montages and self-congratulations.

I have no interest in who won or didn't. Well, almost no interest. The voters who selected March of the Penguins over Murderball need to be whacked, preferably to the point of being crippled. But I've been a hermit the past few months and haven't seen most of the nominated movies.

Random thoughts:
* George Clooney is five wrinkles away of switching from cute to obnoxiously smug.

* The Oscars showed a clip of another, lesser awards ceremony. Kind of like pointing about the janitor at the annual company picnic.

* My roommate remarked that none of the performers thanked God. Which is odd, in a way, especially considering how often he appears in post-game interviews.

* On the same note, as Smirky remarked, some people criticize Hollywood for being out of touch with America. They're right. Some of the subjects in the nominated movies: gay cowboys, single moms, the disabled, racial hatred, and conformity. For the most part, I'm glad Hollywood is out of touch.

* Anyone else get an urge to download a movie off BitTorrent while watching the show? I haven't download anything illegally in months, but I wanted to do so just out of spite.

Random Thoughts

* The tag line for PG-13 movies is "Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13." There should be an enhanced version of PG-13, like "Some material will be inappropriate for children under 13". And it should be called PG-13-Mutha-Fucka.

* Almost every preview for a romance shows the entire plot in the trailer: awkward meeting between man and woman, confidential chat with sassy girlfriend, whirlwind courtship, cue the music, the big kiss. It's like a friend who reads a crappy 400-page book and then tells you it sucks in 30 seconds. Thanks, romantic movie trailers!

* I got a spam email that started, "This is your official notification from Shazam Inc Bank that the service(s) listed below will be deactivated and deleted if not renewed immediately." Do you know what this means?

1: There exists a bank called "Shazam Inc."

2: Evidentially, "Shazam Bank" is so popular that it's profitable for spammers to spoof the bank's web site.

I like Chevy Chase Bank, but if Shazam Bank ever sends me a mailing, we're going to appear in a romantic movie trailer together.

Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo 2

The reviews are in!

After hovering at 3% on the Rotten Tomatoes' "Tomato Meter", Deuce Bigalow 2 has shot up to a whopping 11%. Go Deuce! The Duke Boys better be looking in their rear-view mirror, because Deuce Bigalow is coming up strong.

Let’s see what the reviewers say:

"It would be best appreciated by (a) children of blind, castrated, hearing-impaired Hollywood executives suffering from Tourette's syndrome and arrested development, (b) comic actor-writers who look like Richard Simmons."
-- Jan Stuart, NEWSDAY

"Deuce Bigalow" is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.”
-- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Vile and laughless."
-- Lou Lumenick, NEW YORK POST

"Deuce Bigalow should Bigadie."
-- Me!

"There is something to be said for the uncompromising idiocy of the film, but that something is unprintable."
-- Lisa Rose, NEWARK STAR-LEDGER

"Least imaginative of all -- the TV-commercial director they hired to film it. Yeah, his name is Bigelow, Mike Bigelow. That must have been a real knee-slapper of a meeting."
-- Roger Moore, ORLANDO SENTINEL

"Why are you reading this review? Seriously, do you think this is the movie where Rob Schneider shows the world he's the next Tom Hanks or Jack Nicholson?"
-- Willie Waffle, WAFFLEMOVIES.COM

"Rob Schneider, stop hurting America."
-- Jon Stewart (okay, I made that one up)

Them Duke Boys

You know you made a bad movie when even the photo caption writer is taking a dig at you.

A Rare Victory for Reality

Sony pays $1.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of quoting a fake movie critic in its ads.

A good quote: "The lawsuit, originally filed by two California moviegoers, claimed the ads fooled the plaintiffs into seeing 'A Knight's Tale.' "

JUDGE: "Prosecution, you may begin your opening statement."
LAWYER: "Thank you, your honor. Ladies and gentelmen of the jury, my clients saw 'A Knight's Tale'. The prosecution rests."

Several members of the jury gasp and faint.

JURY FOREMAN: "Get the noose!"

Will Sony continue to cite fake critics, or use the marginally-less deceptive practice of putting their own marketing copy in quotes to make it appear it came from the pen of a critic ("You gotta see this movie!")? Only Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo II, will tell.

You're Kidding Me

You're fucking kidding me.

Bring on the four horsemen!

Star Wars: Episode III Review

In the comments, in case you don't want to read it.

SM Looking for SN. No smokers, please.

A Ninja Pays Half My Rent (thanks Chad). A short, funny, work-friendly movie.

You know, the appellation work-friendly is misused. I've seen web log entries like: "This 35-minute movie is hilarious! Best of all, it's work friendly."

Actually, a 35-minute movie is very work unfriendly. In fact, it is the antithesis to work, unless your computer is powered by a treadmill or needs to play videos to run Excel. The movie may be inoffensive, except that there are probably a few people in your office who get offended watching your lazy ass indulge in net videos and other time wasters, while they're stuck at their computers, work piled up around their monitors, and forced to play Solitaire.

I Hope the Apocalypse Has a Good Soundtrack

One of the hallmarks of movies and television is compressed time, telling a story in a few hours that would take months or years to unfold in life. Compress time is intrinsically exciting, but I wonder if it has a detrimental effect on our ability to observe change in our own lives.

Movies has been described as "life with all the boring parts cut out". The implication is that only certain moments matter in our life, and the rest is inconsequential.

To apply this to a character-based movie, it means that all it takes for the character to change is a powerful moment or series of moments. A dramatic argument, an epiphany, a chance meeting, a death. The difference between a cheesy movie and a great one is how many of these moments are in the movie, one or 12.

This notion, that a particular moment can spur great change in our lives, has been romanticized and reinforced by our culture. Have you heard of Jim Carrey writing a $5 million check to himself when he was a struggling comic? A few days ago, Juan Dixon of the Washington Wizards pleaded with his coach to have faith in him after struggling for three straight games. He scored a career-high the next night! And what is a memoir except a collection of these moments, their importance perhaps heightened?

Moments like these make great stories and allow us a simple way to be inspired by and understand the lives of ourselves and others. Dramatic moments are why people watch sports. But the idea of the "big moment" masks the reality for most people, that change in ourselves occurs through hundreds of interactions on the time scale of months and years, not single events or interactions.

Stories like these are symbols of change and the hard work it took to achieve it, but I think this point can be forgotten in the hunger to believe that one's life can instantly change. That writing the check was what made Jim Carrey successful, not the years of work before and after it.

And the detrimental effect a "big moment" orientation may have is that it may make it harder to spot not only the improvements in our own lives and character, but the decay as well.

It is the idea of gradual decay that has preoccupied me for the past few months. I have noticed it in my life, particularly in the sophistication of entertainment I choose. The decay has been going on for the past few years, a little every month, but it has just been recently that the situation has reached a point to push itself into my conscious.

I'll write about it in a few days. Assuming there aren't any good movies on.

How Bad Is "The Rock"?

My sister, Michele, recently joined Netflix, which allows you to see movie ratings from your friends and family.

She saw that I had rated "The Rock", an action movie starring Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage in the same way that my balls are starring in my nutsack. Many years ago, we had watched the movie along with my other sister, Tina. Our mom's boyfriend at the time, who loved the movie, brought it over on tape. After suffering through an hour and a half of the movie and threatening to turn it off several times, the tape runs out five minutes before the end. We screamed. It remains one of our most searing examples in our lives of the psychological necessity for closure.

Lest you think I am exaggerating about the horror this movie inflicted upon our psyches, after Michele found out I had rated the movie (two stars), she called and left a worried message. She was worried, without irony, that in a fit of forgetfulness I had rented the movie again.

"The Rock" generated the same reaction from my sister as if I were a former alcoholic and she found out I had gone drinking over the weekend. Now that's a bad movie.

Star Wars: Episode III Preview

This just-released, extended preview of Star Wars: Episode III is very entertaining, although it contains so many scenes from the movie that it may spoil the movie for some of you (link from MicheleBoing).

Lord of the Rings Special Edition Easter Eggs

This isn't new news, but I just found out about them today. In the scene selection of any of the disks, highlight the last chapter and press down. A ring icon will appear, which you can select to see an Easter Egg. The mock interview with Dominic Monaghan and Elijah Wood on the Return of the King Extended DVD is pretty funny.

FIFTY EXTRA MINUTES!

Ghaaaaaa...

The end of the Nerd Trifecta is coming Dec. 14. I have already wet myself.

Larger Than Life in Every Sense

Snippets from an article on Marlon Brando's life (July 3, 2004; The Washington Post).

"Mutiny" director Lewis Milestone was one of many directors and studio officials he confounded with his distaste for authority. "Before he would take direction, he would ask why," Milestone said. "Then when the scene was being shot, he put earplugs in so that he couldn't hear my direction."

Starting in the 1960s, Brando became one of the first actor-activists to march for civil and Native American rights. He memorably refused to accept his Oscar for "The Godfather," protesting what he said was discrimination against Native Americans on film and in government policy.

Instead, he dispatched to the Academy Awards a woman who claimed to be a Native American named Sacheen Littlefeather and read an abridged version of Brando's 15-page indictment of policies toward the Indians. Later, she was revealed to be an actress named Maria Cruz, winner of the 1970 Miss American Vampire competition.

"Over time, he represented the disintegration of a sex symbol, as his muscular physique crumbled and he ballooned to more than 300 pounds; he often broke his diets by persuading McDonald's employees to pitch French fries and Big Macs over his fence."

One of his instructors was Adler, who came from a distinguished family of Yiddish actors. One day in class, she asked her students to imitate chickens in a henhouse who had just learned they were about to be hit with an atomic bomb. While others flailed about, Brando sat still and pretended to lay an egg.

Thanks for the Hype, Disney

Fahrenheit 911 to come out June 25th.

"I am grateful to them now that everyone who wants to see it will now have the chance to do so," Moore said in a statement.

"On behalf of my stellar cast — GW, Dick, Rummy, Condi and Wolfie — we thank this incredible coalition of the willing for bringing 'Fahrenheit 9/11' to the people."

Short Reviews of Movies I Haven't Seen

Hell Boy Is It Good

The Punisher: Must See Movie!...For Guantamano Bay Prisoners

Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. Remember "Scooby Doo 1" where a poorly animated dog and a group of plastic characters plodded through a wooden script that bored kids and sucked the marrow out of whatever pleasant memories adults may have had about the characters? Oh, you don't? Then see this movie!

The Alamo: Ala-so-so

The Whole Ten Yards: The One Yard of Crap Really Makes a Difference When You Add It To Nine Yards of Shit

The Prince & Me: Pretty Woman Training Bra

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
'The Man' Sucks; Kaufman Rocks

The Guatemalan Handshake

A friend of mine who makes some "warped-in-a-good-way" films is raising money for his new film, The Guatemalan Handshake. I know nothing about the film except that it probably involves robots, or breakdancing, because most of his films involve robots or breakdancing. But these aren't Hollywood gimmicks. Hollywood would make a film about a breakdancing robot with a talking dog and a man with a handlebar mustache who wants $500,000 or he's going to destroy half of North America.

He's holding a fundraiser at Visions for his new film. It is better than most fundraisers because you get to see a lot of short movies for the ticket price, $10. Also, if you tell him you know me, he will give you a cube of cheese on a toothpick.

The fundraiser--or, as some call it, Robot Monkey Dance Party USA 1984, is next Tuesday the 6th.

Coming Soon!

[Pepsi commercial]
[Coke commercial]
[Fandango commercial]

Okay, here we go.

I slept in until 3:00 today, and I don't feel the least bit guilty. I had a little adventure yesterday in the world of trash. Barring my laziness getting drunk at the bar and slugging my motivation when it comes home, I'll finish writing about what happened soon.

Dude, This Is Funny

This image is courtesy of a Photoshop contest that was on FARK.com.

Hobbit Fan Trailer

Although this fan trailer for The Hobbit is mostly existing LOTR footage edited together, it's worth watching because it's done so well, particularly the first half. Link from Boing Boing.

Hodgepodge

"But the marketing wizards apparently saw him as a man willing to sell his soul. They asked him to incorporate a character of theirs called Robotman. Robotman's licensing was already under way, they told him, and if there was a place for their character in Watterson's strip, then there was a place for Watterson at United Features."

From an article on Bill Watterson, the reclusive creator of "Calvin and Hobbes."

In the "Two Towers Special Edition DVD," one of the new scenes occurs right before Gandalf frees Theoden from Saruman's spell. The wizard points his staff at Theodoen and says, "Time for an extreme makeover, bitch."

My birthday was yesterday. The actual day was a dud, but the days leading up to it were great. A few friends took me to a Russian restaurant and I had a great time with my family, despite their continued attempts to quash my budding career in photography. Michele's description on what people think of the photos on the web site: "He tricks them into coming with the comedy and then springs the photos on them."

Matrix Revolutions

(no spoilers, but skip it if you want to avoid hearing what critics are saying about the movie)

Is there something unique to the post-Baby Boomer generation that drives us to lower our expectations to avoid being disappointed? I'm generalizing, maybe a lot, but I find myself feeling some gratitude to movie reviews that tank one of the three to four movies I look forward to each year.

"The Matrix Revolutions sucks."
-- Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE

That's one of the harshest reviews, but the new Matrix movie is getting panned by most critics. But after the letdown, I was glad I read the reviews. I sought them out. Because I'm still going to see the movie, and the Wachowski brothers are going to have to pull the "It was all a dream" end to crush my enjoyment of the series.

On the surface, lowering one's expectations is a win-win situation. If it's bad, you're not as disappointed. If it's good, you're pleasantly surprised. But what, if anything, is lost?

Hodgepodge

It has been a long time since I have had to write on deadline. If this were a job, I'd be fired by now. "Walther! Where's the Pinsky report?" "I'm working on it. But in the meantime, check out this web page about handlebar mustaches."

* Thank god this is for sale.

* I need an average amount of sleep. Average amount for babies.

* I'm not one of those writers who blames his readers when his don't laugh at my jokes. I put the blame squarely on where it belongs: God. That fucking asshole.

* If you stutter on tv, and say a curse word, at what point do the censors bleep you out? "F-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-dge! Gotcha!"

* A trailer for a war movie started with "Armed only with their courage..." These movie soldiers may be brave, but they're also incredibly stupid. Take a gun with you the next time you go to war, dumb ass.

...

You know how when the third Matrix movie will be released, the final Lord of the Rings movie will come out almost right afterwards? That's how Californians must feel about the Kobe Bryant trial.

Guess What's Coming to the Uptown?

Who wants to check out the Dec. 16th screening?

Great Movie, Great Song, Great Book

I just watched Solaris (revised version). It's an atypical science fiction movie about choice, loss, and a deep desire I suspect we all have and are able to suppress solely for the fact that it can't be fulfilled (in the real world).
Warning: Movie contains no aliens, no laser guns, and occasional periods with no dialogue.

"The Shy Retirer" by Arab Strap (CD info)

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. This is the most revealing history book I have ever read. Okay, I've only read two history books, but this one is definitely the shiz-nit. I'm only a third of the way through it and already it has helped me understand the other forces behind the creation and growth of this country. For example, it may be obvious that people with power and wealth will do what they can to keep their power and wealth (and gain more), but this is the first history book I read that uses this principle to explain part of the motivation for America being formed, rather than idolizing the founders of the country as being solely motivated by a passionate belief in freedom and liberty.

I'll post a few quotes from the book in the next several days. I highly recommend buying a copy, but if you read it and didn't like it, I'm interested in knowing why.

Seabiscut

The movie Seabiscut, a drama about the surprising success of one of the most famous horses in racing lore, is receiving raves for its pacing, emotional content, and surprise ending. If you know you won't have time to check the movie or book out, then you might as well take a look at a screen capture of the surprise ending.